


Where on Earth is Sho's Pen?

by jadenmd (taboonalady)



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Humor, Minor Aiba Masaki/Sakurai Sho, Ninomiya Kazunari/Ohno Satoshi Mention, Sakurai Sho-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-28
Updated: 2009-06-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:48:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23015053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taboonalady/pseuds/jadenmd
Summary: Sho's pen is missing, and he's very certain he didn't lose it.
Relationships: Aiba Masaki & Sakurai Sho, Matsumoto Jun & Sakurai Sho, Ninomiya Kazunari & Sakurai Sho, Ohno Satoshi & Sakurai Sho
Kudos: 2





	Where on Earth is Sho's Pen?

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted from LJ, edited for better language usage.

Sho couldn’t write without that pen. Even for someone as logical as he, there’s just something about that red-painted stainless steel tech pen that made him a little more powerful with his writing than he would be if only with a normal ballpoint pen. For some reason, that pen always allowed him to explore the different combination of words and the rhythm it created in his head. And now, even if he wanted to call the seven wonders of the sea, he couldn’t locate the damn precious thing. He sure didn’t lose it – he always put it in a special case, then the case inside his duffel bag.  
  
He was certain someone else took it in their possession.   
  
\----------   
  
Another morning of Arashi no Shukudai-kun shoot, in their dressing room, Sho was reading three sets of newspapers as usual. No other person was with him at the time: Aiba was having his make-up done, Nino and Ohno were probably sharing shower rooms again, and Jun, well, he was running late.   
  
Jun arrived in the dressing room about ten minutes later. Sho peeked through the top pages of his newspaper, somehow spying on him. Jun was always the one who borrowed pens from Sho most often.  
  
“Matsumoto-kun,” Sho called, while the younger one scoured through his bag for things to wear. (And by things, that meant hats, necklaces and rings – huge, bruise-inducing rings.)   
  
“Mm?” Jun wasn’t looking at Sho, obviously, who was already piercing him with his dagger looks. It was still his favorite pen after all.   
  
“Did you borrow my red pen recently?” Sho tried to ask as polite as he could.   
  
“Your red pen?” Jun paused, and then carefully looked back at the older man. “I borrowed it from you yesterday, if you remember.”   
  
That rigidly creased forehead somehow loosened quite a bit. Sho immediately realized Jun was telling the truth; he did borrow the pen from him the previous day, when Jun was leaving a note for Aiba (which the latter probably hadn’t even read at all). He could even recall that Jun gave it back right away, after shortly a minute.   
  
“Ah, that’s right…” Sho then stared off into space – _where the hell did that pen go?_   
  
Jun knew how important that pen was to Sho, as he smiled to himself. “Where did you last see it?”   
  
Sho further realized – it was not like Jun at all to do that anyway – seeing him smile like that. He was just as concerned, to say the least. Sho breathed out, “It was in my bag before I went home… that’s what I’m sure of.”   
  
“Well, somebody else might’ve stolen it,” Jun joked, turning that gentle smile into a playful smirk.   
  
“Y-You think so?”   
  
“Not really,” Jun geared back, obviously playing with Sho.   
  
“Geez, MatsuJun…” he scratched his head, sighing. “Don’t kid me like that!”   
  
The younger man chuckled, amused at how he could make Sho mad just for a missing pen. “It’s possible!”   
  
“But really, do you think so?”   
  
“Nah,” Jun went on with looking for his favorite hat. “Why would they even do that?”   
  
“Just to mess with me,” Sho simply stated, his face starting to look a bit crestfallen. It was _still_ his favorite pen, and who knows, it might be just as valuable to whoever might have stolen it.   
  
“Don’t fret too much,” Jun faced his senior again, now smiling as sincerely as he could, holding out a purple fedora hat. “You’ll find it when you least expect it.”   
  
Somehow, Sho felt a little better.   
  
\----------   
  
After the shoot, Sho immediately proceeded to the dressing room, preparing his things before going home. In actuality, he didn’t want to prepare his things yet – he kept on checking his bag, his pockets, even his cap in case he had just forgotten to look over them – and instead he wanted to search for that pen. No one needed to tell the Keio graduate that he was obsessing too much over it; no one knew exactly how much it meant to him.   
  
Nino entered the dressing room, quickly walking towards his own bag as he also packed his worn clothes from the Shukudai shoot. As usual Nino was too eager to go home.   
  
Sho only watched him. Nino was known to always “borrow” a pen, since habitually he never asked permission nor did he return it as soon as he should, and Sho wondered if Nino had forgotten to tell him something. Something very important.   
  
“Nino, have you seen my pen?” Sho once again tried to ask carefully.   
  
“ _Pass da mic, pass da pen!_ ” Nino mocked, as he still managed to look busy preparing, before continuing, “What pen? You have many pens.”   
  
Sho sighed before answering, “Tech pen, red. I’m sure you have seen that before.”   
  
“Ohhh, you mean the Ultraman pen?” As he smirked, Nino turned to Sho, who was now wearing a bewildered face.   
  
“U-Ultraman pen?!” Sho was a bit offended, as ridiculous as that might seem. He knew Nino enough to anticipate comments like that, but of course, not every one of them should be tolerated.   
  
“Yeah, Ultraman!” Nino further emphasized with an accompanied superhero move. “I’ve always thought that pen looked like something from the future.”   
  
Sho resisted the unnecessary annoyance instead. “But have you seen it? Somewhere?”   
  
“You look so desperate, Sho-chan,” Nino giggled. “Relax~! I didn’t steal it or anything. Anyway I’m tempted to do my Ultraman moves every time I see that, and that’s not good, right?”   
  
“Are you sure?”   
  
“Mm,” Nino nodded as firmly as he could just to seem convincing. “Would I ever lie to you?”   
  
Sho surely knew Nino better, but the fact that this cunning brat wouldn’t actually cave in – at least not as soon as Sho would’ve wanted – left Sho with no choice but to believe him. Even though he’d been doing that most of the time Nino had lied to him.   
  
“Yes, you would, actually,” Sho still managed to retort. “But well, forget it. I’ll just look for it.”   
  
“Sakurai-san…” Nino was still smirking as he called the attention of his senior. “I know how expensive and valuable that pen is. I wouldn’t really want to be the one who’d lose it.”   
  
Nino had a point, Sho thought. Even as a prank, Nino wouldn’t want to be responsible for something so precious – although admittedly, he could be capable of such a crime. “Are you sure you didn’t take it when nobody’s looking?” Sho asked one more time, just to clear off his conscience of regretting that he possibly let Nino off the hook.   
  
“It’s called ‘stealing’, Sho-chan,” Nino explained playfully, still grinning. “And no, I didn’t steal your red tech pen. I did steal your lucky underwear though and gave it to Aiba-kun once. He said he wanted to buy one of those to feel just as lucky. I wonder if that was effective.”   
  
Sho finally smiled for the first time in hours. Sho realized that Nino was giving him an encouragement. Nino was a different kind of support from Jun, because he always did things in the subtlest way, but the way that he’d tried to show it was always touching.   
  
“Speaking of, I think you should ask Aiba-chan,” Nino suggested, finally being serious.   
  
Sho paused. Maybe Aiba’s problem of having trouble telling which is his or not had something to do with his lost pen.   
  
\----------   
  
Sho was about to go home, about to leave the NTV station building, when he saw Aiba coming towards him from the cafeteria.   
  
“Sho-chan! Sho-chan!” Aiba called out, running towards Sho, who smiled at his friend. “I heard our pen was lost.”   
  
As if this whole pen issue couldn’t become even worse, the fact that Aiba considered that tech pen as something he shared with Sho, like a co-ownership of some sort, didn’t help with the feeling that he might have lost it permanently.   
  
“Why do you keep calling it ‘our’ pen?” Sho was chuckling when he said this, but of course, mainly due to frustration, he was already a bit irritated. “I told you, my dad gave it to me on my birthday when I was in college.”   
  
“But I’ve always treasured that pen the same way as you have!” Aiba remarked. “So I’m quite concerned as to where it might have gone.”   
  
“Right,” Sho nodded. “So that means you haven’t seen it either?”   
  
“Nope,” Aiba shook his head simply. “But I saw you put it in your bag yesterday before you went home.”   
  
“That’s what I thought!” Sho’s voice rose a bit higher than he intended, cracking at some point. Aiba laughed heartily at his reaction. “And I’m not kidding!”   
  
“I know, Sho-chan,” Aiba grinned with his usual perky one, patting Sho on the shoulder. “But I think you’re being more worked up than you should be.”   
  
Despite ‘sharing the same feelings’ about the missing pen, Sho was surprised that Aiba was the only person who could tell him that straightforwardly, honestly and without fear. Sho figured that maybe, it was due to Aiba’s natural positivity – he must not have truly believed it had been lost.   
  
Sho breathed out, probably for the 15th time today. “I am getting too upset, aren’t I?”   
  
Aiba bobbed his head without saying a word.   
  
“It’s not like I can help it,” Sho confessed. “I’ve been writing with that pen for five years now.”   
  
“Have you asked around?”   
  
“Of course, that’s why I asked you.”   
  
“Have you asked _everyone_?” Aiba grinned again as widely as he could.   
  
“Wait—”   
  
“You can still ask him, whoever he is,” Aiba reminded him. “That’s anyone except Nino, I guess. He’s already nowhere to be found.”   
  
\----------   
  
With Aiba’s proposal, Sho dashed immediately back to the dressing room, finding Jun, who was about to leave, and Ohno, who was writing something on a piece of paper… _with his red pen._   
  
“Oh, Sho-kun,” Jun greeted. “I thought you’d already gone home.”   
  
Sho felt a sigh of relief come out of his chest. “Well, I just forgot to do something.”   
  
“By the way, the pen you were looking for?” Jun’s smile slowly formed on his face. “This guy has it in his possession all this time. You should’ve asked him first, you know.”   
  
Ohno finally stared up, realizing he was the one being talked about. “Ah! Sho-kun! I was just about to leave you a note…”   
  
“I see you have something that is mine,” Sho quickly joshed, pointing at his precious pen.   
  
“Well, now that everything has settled, I’ll be going now,” Jun said before leaving the room. “Take care all! Bye Sho-kun, Leader!”   
  
“Bye~” Ohno almost whispered, as Sho simply waved at the youngest member of Arashi.   
  
“Just so we’re clear, I didn’t ask you right away because you were the least person I’d suspect of taking my pen,” Sho explained to Ohno, who had this blank look on his face, again.   
  
Ohno blinked twice before saying, “I’m really sorry Sho-kun… I didn’t realize it was yours.”   
  
“What do you mean?” Sho could only assume how much of a spaced-out individual Arashi’s leader really was. Or how much he actually paid attention to someone or something in his lifetime. “I always carry it around, and I always write with it. How on earth wouldn’t you know that it was mine?”   
  
“I thought it was my dad’s,” Ohno apologetically told Sho. “I found it in between our bags yesterday, and I couldn’t remember whether I brought it with me that day or not. So I took it home.” Ohno was scratching the back of his head as he told Sho this.   
  
Sho only managed to smack his forehead with both his hands. “Ohno-san, there is a rule: when you don’t know, you ask. But I guess it couldn’t be helped.” Then he smiled at his Leader. “Nevertheless, thank you for taking care of it. I thought it was permanently lost or something. I wouldn’t know what to do without it at all.”   
  
“Y-You’re welcome?” Obviously Ohno wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say himself.   
  
Sho just chuckled. He wouldn’t know what to do without dear Satoshi-kun anyway. At least, at the end of the day, Sho had finally resolved his problem without losing sleep that night. And most of all, he learned to ask Ohno firstly, because aside from the older’s ability to get lost – not literally of course – asking all the other members would just drive him crazy, with all of them trying to mess with his head.   
  
“ _My life is my message_.” Sho wrote on his notebook that night. “And I share this message to my four friends.”


End file.
